> We’re not selling anything at all in Europe. That’s because Europe isn’t investing and because no chip factories are being built there

Will Europe accept being a manufacturer only? Or will they finally pick up with a late comer advantage? We need to wait and see.

But luckily Germany saved the world by shutting down their power plants for good

Tinfoil hat, I know, but I'm convinced that Germany hating nuclear power was a Russian influence operation.

It was already decided in 1998 to phase out nuclear power under the SPD–Green coalition. They passed the Nuclear Exit Law in 2002.

It’s mostly the Green Party’s fault, as they have been vehemently anti-nuclear since their inception(1970s).

Ok. Soviet influence operation.

You know people love rUsSiA iS nOt ThE sAmE aS uSsR.

But having read "Stalin" by Stephen Kotkin I've concluded that the USSR was nothing more than a legal construction to increase Russian control over its neighbors.

Why do you think that in 1998 Russia was not influencing Germany to use its gas?

Moreover, Russia and its coopting of the German Left and Greens is well documented.

Gerhard Schröder, chancellor 1998-2005, is well known to be best buddies with Putin and later (three weeks after leaving office!) worked for Gazprom. He is nicknamed "Gas-Gerd".

Schröder also famously called Putin a "true democrat".

> Schröder also famously called Putin a "true democrat".

I do not get why you're mentioning this as an ironic thing. Dictatorship is the culmination of the democratic process. There are tons of historical examples at hand throughout history, just to name a few: Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Pinochet, Fidel Castro, Trump etc. they all channeled the democratic power of the masses to increase and consolidate their own power.

Just because it has happened in the past doesn't mean it's good for "the masses".

So yes, it's ironic because "the masses" normally want democracy, but the person you're responding to is conflating two things one which is good for "the masses" and the other one is bad.

The road to gigatonnes of CO2 is paved with the good intentions of the Greens in every country.

Maybe... but let's not forget the 1986 event.

And we mustn't compare it with the ecological impact of using gas in a democracy instead of nuclear under a communist regime

Sure, but it had a catastrophic impact on the german opinion.

One uncomfortable position being that opinion is a dangerous beast, and what is popular is not necessarily in the best interest of the people who harbor an opinion.

The one where you couldn't safely eat anything from the Bavarian woods for a decade. And that was during years without major droughts. People are fast to forget. Nowadays loosing a harvest to a nuclear plume during a drought would be devastating.

Also, even the nuclear plants near the coast are often shut down during the summer. E.g. France's Gravelines was running only half it's generators due to jellyfish nearly shutting down the cooling system (at least) the second year in a row.

I always wonder how western population is so brainwashed that you always explain everything using two mutually exclusive ideas:

1. "Russia is insignificant infinitely small nothing. It's economy is less than economy of Texas!"

2. "Putin and russians are controlling all the world. They bought every world leader, everyone from Trump to Xi is controlled by them! Anything bad that happens in the world from USA to Africa is directly staged by Russia!"

There is nothing contradictory about a country that is a relative shithole having a very effective propaganda machine. Russia puts a lot of their resources into foreign propaganda, and it shows. It is still a shithole when it comes to economy and standard of living.

IMHO, democratic countries should do the same. I want pro-Western, democratic, liberal propaganda bots to flood the internet, just like the Russian ones do. But I guess liberal governments are just too good to use the same weapons. It could be their downfall.

Reminds me of this joke: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42963542

> But I guess liberal governments are just too good to use the same weapons. It could be their downfall.

Western governments are spending billions on propaganda. There's so-called "Russian opposition" - a clique that receives millions from western funds such as NED (CIA proxy fund).

If you open YouTube from a freshly created Russian google account, the whole home page will be filled with videos from Radio Liberty, BBC News Russian, DW Russian, Khodorkovsky Live, and other channels. The theme of all these channels is the same: "You must surrender and bow to the great western overlords".

Even though my google account is ~15 years old, I still get such recommendations on my main YouTube page daily.

There was an interview with a former Russian lady that works for Google in London and her job is to pick such videos to push to Russian audience.

> Western governments are spending billions on propaganda.

Perhaps, but my point is that the money could probably be spent more effectively: instead of funding high-brow videos on YouTube to preach to the choir (such longform videos are watched mostly by liberal intellectuals), just flood social networks with propaganda bots to convert the IQ-bottom of society that is increasingly addicted to social media; just like Russia is doing.

We have a saying here: "Russian propaganda is not making idiots from people. Russian propaganda is targeting the idiots." Perhaps western liberal propaganda should more effectively target the idiots, too.

If you'd be able to speak Russian, you'd already know that there's western propaganda for all levels of IQ. From highbrow to lowbrow in all the media you can find. And it's there for decades already.

Also, you can find in the Snowden's documents lots of evidence that there are entire departments in CIA and MI-6 working on this propaganda and ways to deliver it.

And it's quite effective, too. CIA managed to instigate many coups in the world using their propaganda approaches. Arab Spring, Ukraine coup in 2014. In Russia they had almost succeeded, there was (and partially is) large percent of population that believed propaganda despite that we already succumbed once in the recent history (in 1991) and results were absolutely catastrophic.

> And it's quite effective, too. CIA managed to instigate many coups in the world using their propaganda approaches. Arab Spring, Ukraine coup in 2014

Ah, I see you are one of the IQ bottoms that believes the Russian propaganda which is targeting the idiots... Sure, all those hundreds of thousands of people on Euromaidan were there because of some nebulous CIA manipulation, and not simply because they saw the much higher standard of living in the EU and wanted the same for themselves (which Yanukovich the traitor abruptly refused).

> In Russia they had almost succeeded, there was (and partially is) large percent of population that believed propaganda despite that we already succumbed once in the recent history (in 1991) and results were absolutely catastrophic.

Russia changed its whole economic system from Socialism to Capitalism. What did you expect, immediate improvements? Of course there will be a period of chaos. I am from Slovakia. It took my country almost 10 years to regain the previous standard of living after the same drastic change. But then we finished the needed reforms, joined the EU and witnessed massive economic growth. Now we are better than ever. In the end it was all worth it.

What was catastrophic for Russia is electing autocrats and warmongers. No country thrives as a dictatorship, and comparison of standard of living of our two countries shows that. Enjoy your burning refineries.

> Russia changed its whole economic system from Socialism to Capitalism.

No, it didn't. It tried to change from state capitalism (the system the Soviet Union had, not the ideology it presented) to private capitalism but ended up veering off into kleptocratic corporatism.

Could you provide a link to this interview? I am genuinely interested.

I suppose it's this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6tLCevZjHo

Can't open it now myself to confirm. Here Alfred Koch states that his daughter worked for Google in 2014 and her job was to pick so-called "opposition" media that would be pushed to users with Russian ip addresses or probably with Google account language set to Russian.

But actually you don't even have to listen to interview. If you're Russian you already know how aggressively this propaganda is shoveled down our throats on YouTube. You have to ban channels for months to minimize the amount of the recommended propaganda videos.

And you still get it because there're like millions of NED funded channels of all sorts in all languages. E.g. in the last three days YouTube aggressively pushes to my recommendations some video in English about how "Russian missiles are all hitting Ukrainian toilets instead of military targets" which is even from the title sounds like some nonsense propaganda for low IQ watchers.

You have to remember that people on the left side of the political spectrum fancy themselves as the intellectual elite. They've never been wrong about anything, and if in hindsight it appears that way (like shutting down nuclear plants), well, surely that was because of a highly sophisticated brainwashing operation by Russia.

You just need to use a little brain, that’s all, no brainwashing needed.

> "Russia is insignificant infinitely small nothing. It's economy is less than economy of Texas!"

It is insignificant on a large scale war against united West, short of using nukes. At the same time it doesn’t mean they can’t terrorize Europe for decades or slowly chip it bit by bit.

Think of it as a delinquent, poor neighbor constantly throwing shit to your back porch, and alternating between threatening you with a knife and a grenade (nuke). Constantly trying to bride, and recruit citizens of your home for its goals.

> Putin and russians are controlling all the world. They bought every world leader, everyone from Trump to Xi is controlled by them! Anything bad that happens in the world from USA to Africa is directly staged by Russia!

I don’t think anyone in their right mind thinks that Xi is bought by Russia. On the contrary, it is widely believed that modern Russia is China’s vassal.

Right, I bet Russians are also why Deutschebahn is a disaster and the beurocracy of the country still runs on fax machines.

Get real.

It does not need to be 100% Russia operation. Some people did actually want nuclear shutdown (greens), Russia then just needs to help a little (in completely unrelated Mr. Gerhard S. has comfy chair at Rosneft)

Most of the population wanted to get of nuclear power. The greens never had enough control over the government to do it alone.

They didn't manufacture it (Chernobyl did that), but they certainly help an issue along when it is in their interest.

Considering that nuclear is expensive and in no scenario part of a minimal-cost power system, it was a rational decision. This is also the reason nuclear isn't build anywhere else without government intervention. This should be entirely obvious to anybody looking at the economics. As a physicist, I am not scared of nuclear, but I am also understand numbers... while the nuclear fans here apparently need to resort to conspiracy theories to make sense of the world.

(Edit: Russian influence is German politics is welle stablished though, but in relation to the right-extremist AFD party)

The countries with the cheapest electricity in the EU all have nuclear:

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/price_average_map/char...

Furthermore, old nuclear is already paid for, and hence often the cheapest option where available:

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/EUROPE-ENERGY/NUCLEARPOWER/...

Market price does not necessarily imply cheap to produce, especially in France where EDF was renationalized. And yes, old nuclear is very cheap, but this does not mean it makes sense to build more nuclear.

ChatGPT could be wrong, but according to it Germany has had an unusually strong anti-nuclear movement since the 1970s.

German post-WW2 distrust of anything seen as related to war, plus the fact that Germany has large coal reserves and so less need for nuclear than many other countries, are likely to have contributed to the phenomenon.

Yeah, that's exactly when all the semiconductor industry left Germany! And why France - the only country that's close to fully nuclear - is the industrial power house of the world. Stay shallow, HN.

France the industrial power house of the world? No.

It does well for itself and Europe but there are several US states that have a larger GDP and industrial output than France does.

That's the point. France has 70%+ nuclear energy in the mix, but isn't the economic miracle that nuclear power is supposed to bring.

> France has 70%+ nuclear energy in the mix, but isn't the economic miracle that nuclear power is supposed to bring.

Cheap energy is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for "economic miracle". France has relatively cheap energy, but it has other problems. It would be worse off without nuclear, though.

Also they are going to save the world by going carbon neutral next decade or so. According to them the world’s carbon emission would be zero as soon as they become carbon neutral and just going back to Germanic tribes days.

> But luckily Germany saved the world by shutting down their power plants for good

No, the big contribution was the large renewable subsidies that kicked off the subsequent rapid descent of their costs by experience effects, experience effects that nuclear never had.

The hard on some people have for nuclear is incomprehensible. It's a shit loser technology. Get over it.

China's CAS institute charts DUV route to 3nm GAA without EUV - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49757999 - September 2026

what's wild about this(not coming at you :), just in general wanted to post ) .... folks pick various details but i think sometimes miss the big picture. If they can make current/next gen HBM with similarish PUE... idk that DUV vs EUV vs 5nm vs 3nm matters?

Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49844663.